Last week, I reviewed where and how I find connection through acquaintance in my day-to-day life and opportunities to cultivate more weak ties in the community. This week, I’m thinking about another big component of feeling connected—keeping informed about what’s going on.
Week Two: Connection through information channels
Living in big cities (New York and greater Boston) for much of my adult life, I was spoiled for really obvious sources of news that included national, regional, and local coverage all in one place. Arriving in North Carolina, it took a bit longer to get a sense of what’s going on near me—and I live right next door to a nationally-ranked journalism school. In many places, local news deserts mean that finding local information requires a mix of creativity and luck. Civic information may come from traditional news organizations or from community groups and other informal grapevines.
Continuing with an auditing approach, here’s what my own civic information environment looks like, with some examples from the past week:
Traditional newsrooms
When my toddler allows it, we play NPR affiliate WUNC on the way to and from daycare and get a mix of local and national news.
I subscribe to The Assembly, a digital magazine focused on political and longform coverage from across the state, and open its email newsletter regularly.
I follow Chapelboro community radio and the transparently-named INDY Week independent weekly on Instagram to see highlights from their coverage.
On occasion, I’ll check in on the Daily Tar Heel student paper, especially for stories about the university, and NC Newsline for other government and political news.
Other information hubs
Membership organizations: this week, the state League of Women Voters sent out a member alert about an ongoing court challenge that seeks to invalidate 60,000 votes from last November’s election. It included a link to the full list of affected voters and a request to identify family, friends, and neighbors affected for the legal case supporting those voters.
Local connectors: I knew Melody (Mel) Kramer through professional networks even before moving to North Carolina. After arriving, I found her social media posts about local events and issues extremely helpful as an orientation guide, and I began following other folks she interacted with on these topics, from our then-mayor to other neighbors who served as something like local influencers.
Independent journalists: Since then, Mel and other neighbors have launched the Triangle Blog Blog, a volunteer-run hub for information on city government, and local environmental, housing, and transportation issues. In many ways, it resembles a local newsroom—even if it’s a side project for everyone involved. And what I love best is how specifically local it is. Unlike my statewide sources or even Triangle-regional news, Triangle Blog Blog goes deep in Chapel Hill and Carrboro.
Informal sharing/word of mouth: A parent in my toddler group chat shared a message from her neighborhood mailing list about a proposed change to the UNC power plant fuel sources. She also posted it to our bigger preschool parent chat. Similarly, I shared the challenged-voters list in that chat and found that two other parents are among the people whose votes may be disqualified. And in both those cases, I went to Triangle Blog Blog and found additional helpful information and links to other sources even though I got the initial news somewhere else.
Recapping it this way, it’s easy to see that I live in a rich local information environment with a wealth of trustworthy sources. Everyone should be so well served. And even with all these channels, I often feel behind on local news specifically: Instagram’s algorithm deprioritizes businesses, so news stories may only appear days after they’re posted, my main BlueSky feed includes enough other people and news that I miss local posts in the broader flow, and my daily news habits still center on opening up the New York Times app for national stories and the food section instead of going directly to one of these local sources. Twice in the past week, I learned about important developments in local political and environmental issues from non-news channels and then got caught up by reading more traditional media coverage.
So in the spirit of an audit, my next goal is to get more local information more consistently. I subscribed to Triangle Blog Blog today so I’ll get future stories by email. I also built a BlueSky list of state and local info sources I already follow so I can filter to just those posts when I’m idly checking social media.
ASK: I’m curious how my own local information environment compares, especially given the collapse of local news nationwide. How do you keep attuned to what’s happening in your immediate neighborhood and community? What other sources of information do you rely on?
What we aren’t doing
This week, I read two pieces on what civic life is NOT that are worth sharing for consideration:
In “The Lies We Tell Ourselves,” Sam Pressler distills three bad assumptions that democracy and civics thinkers aren’t grappling with—that we can have solidarity without actual proximity, that civic renewal is possible without economic renewal, and that we can have democracy without participation. I happily co-sign all three, which may be why I’m here writing about buying local as a civic activity and making public comments on environmental policy changes for the UNC power plant. (To his final point, I’d make a gentle case that policymaking is a form of expertise, but practices like citizens assemblies do a good job of integrating both expertise and participation, so it’s hardly a rebuttal of the basic point).
And in Slate, Maggie Lange mourns the lost potential of buy nothing groups as community forums, where people trade all kinds of stuff but rarely convert those hand-offs into deeper connections. If you’re in one of these groups, I dare you to be the person who writes that awkward “do you want to be friends?” message sometime.
Weeknight dinner win
Thanks to the daycare parent chat, this three-ingredient macaroni and cheese has become a regularly recurring feature in our menu plans. I’ve increased the amount of pasta relative to everything else (nearly doubling it, actually) because I prefer a less soupy dish, but it’s a reliable way to get everyone fed and flavorful enough that I can substitute whole wheat pasta with no complaints.
To your question, my sense is that Texas is an interesting place--there's a very well-regarded state-level news source (The Texas Tribune) but my guess is that italics readership is the Texas equivalent of Politico's. In DFW, KERA is experimenting in lots of directions--they started or bought a local online paper (Fort Worth Report) and a legacy physical outlet.
I'm not alone, though, I don't think, in observing that if people know anything about politics they are more likely to know about federal politics than state or local. I imagine the toxicity of national politics prevents some people from ever looking any further.